Somewhere in Mespotamia
Something like 12,000 years ago
Traffic was slow twelve thousand years ago. Most humans were hunter-gatherers, roaming the land on foot. But a hardy band of pioneers decided to try something new. They called it “agriculture.” They called it “civilization.”
But life was hard for the villagers. They had to contend with the vagaries of climate, their lack of knowledge, and the implacable opposition of their traditionalist peers. They were on the verge of giving up, until one of them made a discovery that might change the world…
QUEST FOR BEER
chapter 1
Rain came to the first agricultural settlement on Earth.
Thunder woke Sera in the predawn darkness. As thick raindrops fell on the thatch-and-mud roof of her dwelling, a flash of lightning illuminated the open doorway, from which the skin had been pulled back to admit the night air. On the mat beside her, Fredd snored gently, oblivious to the storm.
Sera sat up and drew the sheepskin blanket around her shoulders as the thunder boomed, louder and closer, echoing up and down the valley. The rain intensified. How could Fredd sleep through this? From a far corner, Sera’s ears picked up a new sound: the steady drip of rainwater working its way through the roof and falling on the dirt floor.
She reached over and shook his shoulder. “Fredd! Wake up. It’s pouring.”
He had been out with the hunting party until dusk. They had roamed farther than usual, and not only had they returned empty-handed, they had been confronted by a hostile group of hunters in the hills. Fredd had been in a foul mood, bolting down the fish and barley cakes she had served him without a word to her. She had tried to interest him in sex, but he had pushed her away and gone to sleep facing the mud-brick wall.
The bearded man beside her opened his eyes and came to awareness. “Well, we need the rain,” he said.
“Yes, but this might be too much of a good thing. Listen.”
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He propped himself up on an elbow and looked at her. The drip in the corner became a steady trickle. “Shit,” he said. “I thought I fixed– ”
His words were cut off by another flash of lightning and a thunderclap that shook the whole structure. Sera’s nose caught the acrid smell of smoke. The dirt at the entrance to their dwelling was already a small sea of water and mud. Sera felt the first few drops of water on the top of her head. Fredd must have felt them, too, for he looked up at the ceiling at the same time she did.
Lightning lit the sky again. She gripped his arm. “Fredd, I’m frightened.”
He held her close, briefly. “We’ve weathered storms before. The Great Mother has seen us through safely every time.”
“But what if this is the Mother of all storms?”
He laughed and kissed her forehead. “It’ll be light soon.”
They huddled until the storm moved off. At daybreak, a fire was started in the village’s central cooking area, near the shrine to the Great Mother, the giver of all life. The villagers brought wet bedding and clothes out to dry in the sun. Women spread wetted barley on flat black stones, to later be baked into sweet loaves.
Fredd fixed the roof. But he didn’t get around to patching the hole in the far corner. In that corner, Sera had stored a clay container of the cakes the villagers had learned to make from soaked grain. The storm had flooded the vessel. When the clouds parted, the sun shone through the hole in the roof, heating the mixture of barley loaves and rainwater. Invisible to the handful of humans who had recently renounced the wandering ways that had always defined their species, myriads of tiny creatures floated through the air and settled on the surface of the liquid. Over the next few days they began the process of digestion and regurgitation that was indistinguishable from magic. The mixture began to bubble. A layer of foam formed on top.
Though the life forms were too small and too primitive to possess anything like consciousness, they wrought profound change on the liquid that had accumulated in the abandoned corner. But the creatures could do only their small but vital part. The sludgy mixture lay waiting to be noticed by a sentient being. Nothing was preordained – the container could be kicked over by accident, or its contents tossed as wastewater and ruined food. Agriculture was a hard life whose rewards came slowly; these experimenters might grow tired of their alternative lifestyle and return to the woods and the caves.
Meanwhile, the mixture metamorphosed in silence, the fate of humanity fermenting deep beneath the thickening layer of inscrutable foam.
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